Tutorials — Page 6

Giant Cookie Cake with Leftover Halloween Candy

November 5, 2014 by Jenn

If you have a bunch of leftover candy from Halloween, this is the recipe for you! If you ate it all your Halloween candy, good news- it’s all on clearance at the local stores, so go and grab some more before it’s all gone! If you do not live where you participate in Halloween festivities, you can use any candy you want to! I’m solving all of the world’s problems this morning- finding solutions to a lack of candy. You’re welcome.

Some people (not naming names- ME) went out of town after purchasing Costco candy for all the trick-or-treators in the neighbourhood and have a ginormous bag of candy (that I don’t like) leftover- NEVER opened! Oops. If you’re like me, there is serious strategy to buying Halloween candy. I buy what you don’t like, and then you won’t eat it. Usually, that is a fail safe way ensure there is no snacking, BUT since I recieved so many requests for a new recipe on how to use up leftover candy, I had to go out and buy some. Had to. HAD to! Then I HAD to go out and buy more when we snacked our way through the chocolate candies. HAD TO PEOPLE!! YOU MADE ME!! I thank you for that. My pants don’t, but I do.

Making a giant cookie cake definitely saves time, rather than dishing out individual amount of dough to make smaller cookies. You can do this with this recipe, but the fun is in serving a slice to your family or friends. Triangular pieces are a change from the standard round cookie, as are chunks of candy! If you choose to roll these cookies into rounds, bake them for 15-18 minutes, or until golden brown at 350F.

Whether you choose to make this the traditional way, or in it’s giant cookie form as seen in our tutorial, it’s a delicious, and fast way to use up any candy/chocolate you might have hanging around!

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Filed Under: Cakes, Cookies, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: cake, candy cake, cookie, cookie cake, giant candy cookie cake, giant cookie, Giant Cookie Cake, Halloween, halloween candy, leftover candy, leftover halloween candy

Cherpumple: Triple Layer Pie in a Cake

November 1, 2014 by Jenn

What to call a pie in a cake?? A “pake”? A “cie”? Or what about “Cherappkin”? Appcherrkin? Pumpcherple? CHERPUMPLE!

I think I’m going to stick with “Pie in a cake”. It much easier to figure out what in the world I’m talking about!

This cake is admittedly time consuming since you have to bake three pies ahead of time, as well as prepare two types of cake batter. It’s definitely an investment in your life, but it is bound to impress anyone that looks at it. And most likely they’ll have to look at it twice to figure out what in the world they are looking at!

To make the investment of time shorter, using premade pies from a grocery store bakery work excellently, as does using box mixes for the cake batter. In the recipe below I have provided the link to all of our homemade versions of the pies, and cakes, if you are so inclinded for this big project.

Since the cake was such a big project, I went with an easy, light covering. Instead of using a heavy buttercream, I thought whipping cream would be best paired with the cakes/pies. After all, there is a lot going on in this cake, so the last thing it needed was another element to confuse the taste buds.

You can choose to go with any flavour of cake batter, as well as any type of pie when you’re making your own version of this. The hardest part of that will be trying to name it!

When you’re baking your pies, make sure that they are at least an inch (2 centimeters) smaller than your cake pan. This will ensure that there is just enough room for the cake batter to completely envelop the pie. You want to make sure that you spread the cake batter on the bottom, sides and top so that the batter prevents any of the pie from escaping while baking- especially in the fruit pies! Roughly, I wanted an inch (2cm) of cake batter underneath and on top of the pie to help prevent that from happening.

This “PAKE”, “CIE”, whatever you want to call it is super fun to make. I hope you have a blast !

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: apple, Apple pie, cake, cake pie, cherpumple, cherry, cherry pie, chocolate, chocolate cake, pake, pie, pie cake, pie in a cake, pumpkin, pumpkin pie, turducken, vanilla, Vanilla Cake

Monster High Doll Cake – How to Make

October 30, 2014 by Jenn

A Monster High doll cake has been something that has been high on the request list for a while now, so when the opportunity came to work with Monster High AND Chef Dominique Ansel, we jumped at the chance! Why wouldn’t we?

Monster High dolls embracing differences and celebrating what makes everyone unique. Each “ghoul” as the dolls are called, has a different monster lineage and live by the slogan “be yourself, be unique, be a monster.” For example, Draculaura, is the daughter of Dracula, and Frankie Stein, Frankenstein. I know the kids in my Kindergarten class LOVE these dolls.

Chef Dominique is the genius behind the Cronut (a croissant, donut combination) and the Milk and Cookie Shot! We have done our own takes of both of those recipes on our YouTube channel already, and loved making them! His newest creation is the Shocklette Monster for the Monster High brand. The Shocklette Monster treat is chocolate mousse, dipped in chocolate, encased in marshmallow! It sounds freaky fab!

You can follow Chef Dominque Ansel as he documents his progress on his Shocklette Monster treat over on his Instagram.

Since we were asked to join in and get in on the Monster High celebration as well, I decided to turn Draculaura, well her dress, into a cake! What’s great about this cake is that you don’t need anything special, besides a Monster High doll. A cake doll pan helps, but as you can see in my Barbie Cake video, you can also just use a tapered bowl to shape the dress.

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: black cake, cake, chef ansel, chef dominique ansel, cronut, doll, doll cake, dominique ansel, dominique ansel bakery, draculaura, draculaura cake, monster, monster cake, monster high, monster high cake, monster high doll, monster high doll cake, pink black cake, pink cake, shocklette, shocklette monster, shockolatte, shockolatte monster

3D Baseball Cake

October 25, 2014 by Jenn

Plaaaaaaaay ball!

It’s World Series time in North America, and if you don’t know what that means, its Major League Baseball’s final show down of the top two teams of the season. I’ve never been much of a baseball fan, but around this time of year, something makes me what to watch the World Series. It must be the hype and excitement!

I never played baseball growing up as a kid- I was a soccer player- but I did have one exciting incident back in grade four or five where I learned to “watch the ball” the hard way. The last thing I remember is hearing “Jenn, watch the ball!” being yelled at me by my dad (he was my Gym teacher), and then WHACK. Ball right in the back of the head. Ouch.

This cake is made easy because there is no carving involved. I was shopping at the Bulk Barn (as I do pretty much everyday) and I saw this 3D ball mold. At the time, I didn’t have a specific cake in mind, but I bought it anyway. When I finally realized the baseball season was coming to an end, to celebrate the World Series, I decided to use the pan to make a 3D baseball! There are so many other sports balls that it can be used for as well. I’m looking forward to making basketball, golf balls, soccer balls and more baseballs with this pan. I also used one of the domes to make the spider body in the 3D spider web cake I made a couple of videos ago (shocker!!!).

When decorating a cake with the star tip method, it does take a lot of time . . . and pain if you have tendinitis like I do (too much cake decorating!). I love the final look of this type of cake though . . . it’s worth the pain!

For this cake, I wanted to add a second element beyond the ball for a more complete cake. That is where the idea for the field came in. The ball can stand alone if you don’t want to have the additional element (or work), but I think that it “completes” the cake.

Good luck to the final teams in the World Series this year! And to those of you who are ending your baseball seasons as well.

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: 3d baseball, 3d baseball cake, 3D cake, baseball, baseball cake, baseball field, baseball field cake, cake, major league baseball, MLB, world series, world series baseball

Bear Poop Cookies: Backpack Baking in the Canadian Rockies

October 22, 2014 by Jenn

It’s bear country here in the mountains of British Columbia, Canada. In fact, there was just a horrific grizzly attack recently, a couple of hours from our house. The man survived, but still, attacked, and mauled by a grizzly! Yikes!

This video is definitely one that is to be taken with good humour. We are having more fun with our videos, and I want you to have fun while you’re watching as well! Stepping outside the box (of our kitchen) keeps us interested, challenged, and hopefully adds an element to life that you might not see where you live. We are so lucky to live where we do, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and with our Backpack Baking series, we love to showcase our home turf!

This hike takes place on a local hike called “The Butte”, and it is located halfway between our city of Cranbrook, and the nearby one, Kimberley. It is about a 30-45 minute hike, and is one that can be done easily with kids, but when filming and hiking, it takes a couple of hours! Paul has recently started a new hobby, flying remote control aircraft’s (quadcopters, wings, planes etc), so we were loaded our backpacks up with the ingredients needed for baking, the quadcopter stuff, and the tools needed for the filming. It was a heavy load for the two of us. We need to hire a pack mule next time.

These bear poop cookies could be done a with a number of different add-in ingredients. I chose to use coconut, white chocolate chips, and pine nuts for optimal “poopness”. You could use other nuts, and ingredients if you prefer to have your scat look like something else. Black bears tend to eat a lot of berries around where we live, so the pine nuts were an essential add-in for my version.

Thanks to my mom for lending me her bear costume. Doesn’t everyone’s mom have a bear costume on stand-by for emergency bear videos? No? Oh. Well, my mom does! It must be the Kindergarten teacher in her. It’s her tickle trunk.

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Filed Under: Backpack Baking, Cardio Tagged With: aerial photography, Backpack Baking, backpacking food, bear poop, bear scat, camping, camping food, chocolate cookies, coconut cookies, cookies, hiking, pine nut cookies, pine nuts, quadcopter, white chocolate

Devil’s Food Cake Halloween Cupcakes

October 19, 2014 by Jenn

I usually put my blog posts up when the video goes live in the mornings, but Paul and I have been fortunate enough to have spent the last four days in Toronto hanging out (and working) at Buffer Festival! Which means the Paul end of things (the video) was scheduled and ready to go before we even left, and the Jenn end of things (the blog post) was not. I apologize to those of you who wait to hear my insightful additions to our current video in the form of the blog. Thanks for that Mom. Actually, I don’t even think she reads it! She’s really great at sharing on Facebook though 🙂

The last couple days, and months, and pretty much year have been incredible ones for Paul and I. We are incredibly fortunate to have dream jobs as creators on YouTube. Neither of us had been to Toronto before, and I love it here! I love the shopping, I love the culture and I love that there is any kind of food you could imagine here! We had the most amazing Thai food right behind our hotel our first night here. I haven’t seen a cupcake though. It’s been a nice break from them. We attended the Buffer Festival Industry day on Thursday and set up a booth to serve our Pumpkin Spice Latte cupcakes. Make sure you check us out on Facebook and Instagram for pictures of all the fun things we did that day. On Friday we attended a couple of screenings; Rhett and Link, and Epic Meal Time. Rhett and Link seem like incredibly nice guys, and their screening was great to sit through. They showed the audience the evolution of their channel(s) and we even got to watch Monday’s upload ahead of time! It’s a great one! The EMT screening was a showing of a couple of episodes of their new TV series, Epic Meal Empire. It was great to see those guys in person as well, and I even met Harley on the street . . . and totally fan girled on him. I was supposed to be professional, but that didn’t happen! I’ve watched him for so long, that I was just honored to be able to talk to him. Last night we finished the night off with a creator party at the pop-up YouTube Space TO, and had a blast. Google always treats us incredibly well. At the party, we were in the company of amazingly talented people . . . to name drop unabashedly, my friends Harley, Rhett, Link, and Shay Carl. There were soooooo many others that I knew were amazing creators, but being so busy, I don’t have a lot of time to consume my own medium! This morning, with very little sleep, we headed off to YTSTO again, for a couple of workshops. One on Creator Development, which we have had before, but it’s always good to have a recap and check in, and then another presentation from Rhett and Link. They have created themselves quite the empire and they have so many exciting things in store- including a new morning show with women!

Anyway, that’s the long winded reason why my blog post is late. “Jenn,” you ask, “can’t you schedule your blog posts like Paul schedules the videos?” Yes, I can. But I can’t figure out our server’s time zone!

I’ve been wanting to do these devil cupcakes since last October. I wanted to do them last year, but we ran out of time. I figure waiting a year to see if I really like an idea is probably a good thing. If I still really liked it, then I would definitely make it. I don’t have any regrets when it comes to cake videos we’ve uploaded, but there are some ideas that looking back, I know I could have done them better. When I’m developing an idea/recipe, I want to make it as fabulous as possible. So when thinking about what would go well with a devil cupcake, devil’s food cake was the obvious choice!

The difficulty for this recipe came when attempting to dip the cupcakes. If you do not place them in the fridge, the buttercream is likely to plop off and fall directly into your red melted chocolate. Make sure it’s solidly set on the cupcake before dipping, or you’ll ruin your red chocolate like I did while practicing!

If you’re still with me and reading, thanks again Mom, I won’t take up anymore of your time . . . so here is the super simple video for how to make your own Devil Cupcakes.

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Filed Under: Cupcakes, Holiday Baking, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: buffer fest, buffer festival, buffer festival 2014, cake, chocolate cake, chocolate dipped, chocolate dipped cupcake, cupcakes, devil, devil cake, devil cupcakes, devil's food cake, dipped cupcakes, epic meal time, Halloween Cupcakes, hallween, hi hat cupcakes, red dipped, rhett and link, shay carl

How to Make Edible Fake Blood & Bloody Halloween Cupcakes

October 15, 2014 by Jenn

This idea is gross. There’s no way around that. If you don’t want to think about squeamish things, don’t keep reading! But, if you need something for Halloween that is disgusting, then this is perfect for you!

In this tutorial, I show you how to make edible BLOOD! If blood covered cupcakes doesn’t revolt you enough, then definitely add our Heart and Brain Cupcakes to your dessert buffet. The combo of the two cupcakes is sure to scare and frighten people away from eating them! Who needs a diet when you serve bloody, heart and brain cupcakes?!?

To make the edible blood, all you need is corn syrup, chocolate sauce and red gel paste. You can get away without the chocolate sauce, but it adds a bit of flavour to the mixture, rather than the pure sugar rush of just using the corn syrup. Don’t worry, you’ll still get a sugar rush from this combination, it will just taste better! Also, the chocolate tames down the brightness of the red gel paste, which makes for a more realistic blood colour. I don’t have a ton of experience when it comes to blood, but I do know that it’s not fluorescent red when it comes out of my mishaps. Adding a small amount of chocolate helps with that.

If you want to add an additional element of gore factor, fill the middle of the cupcakes with a bright red cherry filling that will burst out when you first bite into the cupcake. I’m sure that will be gross enough for the goriest, gore lover! Also, teaming these cupcakes up with “broken” fingers, and “blood” filled syringes, like we have in the final shot of the video, will help make for the perfect Halloween scene. If you can handle it, that is!

We have lots of other Halloween ideas up on our YouTube channel, so make sure you check out our Halloween playlist!

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Filed Under: Cupcakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: bloody, bloody cupcakes, edible blood, fake blood, gory, gory cake, gory cupcakes, Halloween, Halloween Cake, Halloween Cupcakes, halloween idea, how to make blood, how to make fake blood

3D Spider Cake / Halloween Cake

October 11, 2014 by Jenn

This weekend we’re celebrating Thanksgiving up here in the great white north (Canada), but Halloween is already on everyone’s minds! I can tell because I’ve received dozens of requests for new Halloween recipe requests. We’ve done a number of treats over the last couple of years, so if you’re looking for more ideas, try these: Halloween Candy Bark, Spider Chocolate Chip Cookies, Heart and Brain Cupcakes, Halloween Cake Roll, Spider Web cupcakes, and a Black Velvet Cake!

This cake is a fun one to do as the inside of the cake is bright and the outside is black and spooky! You can pile the cake batter into the cake pans however you like, and I’ve shown a number of other ways to make marbled cakes, but this time, I tried something new, and made the cake by squeezing cake batter out of a piping bag. I found this way to be slightly less messy

Making the marshmallow web is super messy, but super fun as you can get the marshmallow’s anywhere and it looks good!! Washing up from the messy is surprisingly easy, and a little hot water and scrubbing is all you need!

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: 3D, 3D cake, cake, Halloween Cake, halloween colors, spider, spider cake, surprise cake, surprise inside

Cherpumple: Triple Layer Pie in a Cake

Monster High Doll Cake – How to Make

3D Baseball Cake

Bear Poop Cookies: Backpack Baking in the Canadian Rockies

Devil’s Food Cake Halloween Cupcakes

How to Make Edible Fake Blood & Bloody Halloween Cupcakes

3D Spider Cake / Halloween Cake

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